We All Will Fail: Success Happens When You Get Back Up

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to the 1% Better Newsletter, and welcome to the 22 new people who joined since last week’s edition.

Today we are going to talk about failure— and more importantly getting back up.

There is a conventional wisdom that “failure” is inherently bad.

But the reality is that failure is just a data point. It gives us feedback as to what is not working.

Stop Avoiding Failure

Most people view failure as something to avoid, but the truth is that the most successful people have failed significantly in their life— which has given them the tools to reach success.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg— they all dropped out of college.

This would be considered a failure by society that pushes every kid to go spend 200k on a degree.

But they ended up starting some of the largest companies in the world.

The response you get when you mention these people are

“They are the lucky few”

“Very few people get to be their own boss”

etc etc etc

There’s a saying in finance that I think applies well here: “The herd rarely wins”

If we are doing exactly what everyone else is doing, chances are we aren’t going anywhere particularly special.

If what we are doing is easy, the reward is probably not that significant.

Only hard things have the greatest payoffs. Simply the fact that it is hard, is why it’s worth doing.

Getting Back Up

We will all, at some point in our lives fail, but the important—and hard part— is getting back up.

Steve Jobs was fired was Apple, and then re-joined as CEO years later after launching another company.

Bill Gates was bottled up by the DOJ on an antitrust legislation which slowed the innovation he could do.

They didn’t let the failures make them pack up shop. They got back up.

Getting back up is a muscle. The more you train and engage it, the easier it becomes.

Now I know you’re saying “Ok but it’s easier said than done” and you would be completely right.

So how do we get back up?

Failure is a single event— it happens. It only becomes something more when we attach feelings of anxiety, sadness or anger to it.

The trick is continuing on our path regardless of how we feel. Once the emotions fade, we realize it wasn’t that scary in the first place.

Plus, we have a new data point of what not to do next time.

No matter what, it never hurts to give something another try, eventually we will all get used to getting back up.

If you liked this newsletter, here are some other pieces that dive into a similar topic that you might like:

And for my podcast listeners, here is the most recent episode with Jacob Osiason. It was a great conversation on entrepreneurship and navigating life as a young person: